If I'm not mistaken, the Diatribes lived in Southwestern Utah, around
the time of Jesus.
But seriously, No one on this humble little list writes diatribes.
Some of us are more detailed than others, while some of us tend to
ramble. But seldom do we have diatribes. That is at a level faar,
far beneath us.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/30/20, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
However, you do write diatribes whenever someone disagrees with an article
which you post.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 9:45 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Tones
Roger,
I don't know if you're going to find it in a dictionary. The term I was
using is, "emotional tone". You tend to be very literal. I did explain it in
another way. The problem isn't that you're not exact enough or precise
enough. The problem is that you are not gentle and polite. The problem is
that sometimes, if someone writes something with which you disagree, it may
not be necessary to always write an opposing view, even if you disagree. On
a list like this, it's OK to let people write what they think or feel
sometimes without arguing. If I wrote diatribes every time I disagreed with
an article that someone else or even I posted, I'd be consuming a great deal
of my time.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 12:31 AM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Tones
Miriam is always accusing me of inserting tones into what I have to say and
Carl has in the past too. That has never made sense to me because I have
always understood the word tone to be a quality of a musical note or some
other kind of sound akin to pitch. I was not real clear what the difference
is between a tone and a pitch, but neither word seemed to have any
application at all to something I write. So I just now decided to look it up
in a dictionary. I used the Wiktionary application that is built into my
JAWS screen reader. The first thing that is discussed is exactly what I
understood the word to mean. It said that a tone was a specific pitch. In
that case it is pretty much the same thing as a pitch as I have always
understood it to mean. In that case I often hear different tones in what
someone has to say when they are speaking. It is what I call a tone of
voice, but it still seems that that does not apply to writing. As I looked
further down the page there was some discussion of things like muscle tone
and tones of colors. I skimmed past that stuff because I didn't see how that
could relate to this context either.
But I did find something about applying the word tone to writing and I
suppose that is the context that I was looking for. It was brief. It simply
said that it referred to a way of writing. Well, everyone has a way of
writing, so I suppose everyone has a tone to their writing. But if that is
tone then I am only conscious of only one tone to my writing.
It is simply to say what I have to say as clearly as I can. I do not succeed
in being as clear as I want to all the time and when I am asked for
clarification I try to explain myself again as best as I can. When someone
does not specify what they are having trouble with in what I have to say I
often do not know what to say and I think I often say the same thing over
again with the words rearranged a bit. It would really work a lot better if
someone who did not understand what I was trying to say would do some
explaining to me, some explaining about what and how he or she did not
understand about what I said. However, whether I succeed or not I still try
to be as clear as I can. But what I am being accused of is inserting some
kind of nefarious tones into what I write.
That makes no sense at all. I simply say what I have to say and do not even
think of being somehow underhanded or whatever. Again, the only tone I
strive for is clarity. So it still makes no sense to me that I would be
accused of using tones of any other kind. All I can say is to repeat this
again. I say what I mean and mean what I say. And I do not insert hidden
meanings into what I say. I wouldn't know how to go about that even if I
wanted to.
--
___
Sam Harris
“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is
likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our
powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the
one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter
our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which
we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes
is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't
perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of
scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures
of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good
science.”
― Sam Harris
